Defender
by Ready To Flyxxx
Summary: Roy listens to his orders, he listens to Order 3066, and when his superiors say fire! He fires.


**Defender**

* * *

" _You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will just look wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs." -Slaughter-House-Five. Kurt Vonnegut._

* * *

Asim still remembers hearing news about the first shot.

He holds on to the importance of it all. How it wasn't _his_ people who wanted war. How it wasn't _his_ people who started it. It was those men - the ones with gunpowder in their veins and perverse unclean hands that trifle with the unnatural. It was those devils with their angry eyes and sullen looks that promise death is coming, _it's here it's here._ It was that Amestrian soldier who took the life of his sister - a young Ishvalan girl, and Asim will not let himself forget the way fear flickered across his grandmother's face when their village was told. His people have done no wrong. They don't deserve to be attacked by anyone, least of all lowly Amestrian dogs.

Because Asim _knows_ that his people are proud and because he understands that they must do what they can to keep their people alive, he will fight back. He and his people will not let themselves be played with by the likes of heretical men who only want blood and can never comprehend the beauty of Ishvala.

So Asim wears sashes of burgundy and gold, let's the sun kiss his dark Ishvalan skin, and fixes his red eyes on the horizon where the sky meets Daliha soil. His country is beautiful. His country is blessed. He understands the sacredness of his name, _defender,_ and how it was his God who gifted him with it.

This is his fate.

He is too young to fight when the first shots hit, but they have seven more years of this hell and he will step foot on the battlefield sooner than he thinks.

It's the year 1908 when his father declares him a man, places a knife in his palm, and pushes him forward.

He is no more than seventeen.

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Roy admires the clean and sharp look of his uniform, the way it makes his shoulders look broader - makes him look older. He pulls a white glove over his fingers and watches as the creases smooth over. Everything must be in order.

 _Order,_ a word Roy Mustang understands better than his own name. He is a newly instated alchemist, and with that responsibility comes a number of rules he must adhere to and respect: don't create gold, don't create human lives (weapons), and most of all, _always_ obey the military. No. Matter. What.

So Roy is shipped off to Ishvalan soil where the sun blazes hot against its coarse desert sand and where white-haired and red-eyed people must die. There is no sugar-coating in the military.

Fighting like this is a duty - a privilege. There's is nothing sweeter than dying for one's country.

Roy listens to his orders, he listens to Order 3066, and when his superiors say _fire!_ He fires.

He snaps. His fingers blaze. He is 23.

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Asim's grandfather is a monk.

His words are beautiful, and when he speaks about Ishvala and His benevolence, how they must adhere to His teachings and His will, because Ishvalan land is arid and dry, and water is scarce and they must pray for better fortune, Asim can't help but feel a stirring in his heart. He _believes_ so much in his god. So much so that he would die for Him. So much so that he almost feels sorry for those Amestrian soldiers. They can't see what he sees. They don't know.

But his people don't let him forget what those soldiers have done and the lives that they've taken. He is reminded of alchemists who practice a forbidden art laced in excessive pride and illwill - how they dare insinuate that their hands are more capable than that of Ishvala. He is reminded of their silver tongues sliding across ivory teeth that whisper the word _genocide_ like a spell. Sometimes, he lies awake at night with sweat beading across his forehead, imagining his people slaughtered by their bewitched hands. In these moments, sorry is least of his worries.

Along with his grandfather's spiritual teachings comes lessons of fighting - of melee and hand to hand combat.

The first time his grandfather asks Asim to hit him, the boy goes slack. He can handle the training: sacks of dried flour lined up like fake soldiers, ready to take a knife to their middles or a foot to their bases. It's easy then, when the only spillage caused by his ministrations is puffs of powder that rise to the air from the bulky dummies.

But hitting his grandfather?

This is the first lesson Asim receives in not underestimating his opponent. His grandfather may be old, but he is easily worth ten of those Amestrian dogs, and Asim finds himself on the ground before he can even think of blocking.

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Roy thinks, during the trip to Ishval, of his old teacher.

Berthold Hawkeye was a brilliant man, skilled in his mind and skilled in his hands, able to throw a rock in the direction of a theory and follow it - pick it up and turn it around, until every angle had been covered. The secrets of alchemy seemed to be tattooed on the back of his eyelids, and the man would simply blink before they would spill from his mouth, or thread through his fingertips.

Alchemy to Berthold was not a tool or a practice; it was an art. Something molded by the hands of humans...something perfected by his own hands: flame alchemy. A sizzle. A crackle. Light to be born.

He claimed it was the most powerful form of alchemy, and Roy would agree. However, despite Roy being his apprentice at the time, the man refused to entrust his sacred art onto him. _What?_ He would say. _Give you my greatest work so that you may join the military? Become some loyal dog? Ha! Don't be such a fool._

Roy thinks now, that Berthold was not a good man. Brilliant? Yes. But greedy too and selfish.

After all, what kind of sick man tattoos his secrets onto his daughters back? Who would take advantage of a young girl's chastity - her unwillingness to reveal such a place to anyone. His research was safe, right? Wrong. Roy has felt her smooth skin, marred by angry off-kilter lines of red, and has uncovered the codes himself. Riza was not like her father.

Roy wants to transform the government. He wants to change the way things are done and if he can get through this war, then everything he's worked so hard for, _everything he promised to Riza,_ will come true. He's an idealist.

So he puts on his gloves and keeps his eyes on the Daliha soil where the convoy rolls steadily.

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Asim was taught how to fight with his hands by his grandfather, but that is not enough to defeat the devils they are up against, so his father takes him to where the other Ishvalan soldiers line up, and where the sleek, gold rimmed machine guns lie. _Maxim M1910,_ he hears one of his brothers say, and Asim places a hand against the burning metal.

They are resistance fighters; they are men who must defend their homeland. Even though Asim feels sick when he looks at such a machine, he pays attention when he is instructed of its power, of how to load and pull its trigger. He listens and he learns fast, and when they tell him to fire! He fires.

He still keeps his father's knife close to his breast pocket. As he learns how to man a rifle next, Asim thinks that he doesn't like the smell of smoke that fills the air after the bullets fire.

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Roy is thankful for the lack of rain in Ishval. After all, he is pretty much useless when it comes to water (the humidity and all that) and he needs to be able to light his hands up as if they are matches. His superior officers tell him to snap his fingers, and what they mean is make fire out of thin air, but it is much more complicated than that.

If only they knew the alchemy - how he must raise the density of oxygen in the air. How he must select his target and surround them with the now easily flammable air. How he has to create subtle pathways from himself and his opponent and direct those pathways so that they may ignite in a beautiful blossoming of spark and fire and flame. It is all very technical and precise.

They don't know that he actually can still create flame when there is water present. He has done the math. He knows how he must break the bond until hydrogen and oxygen are separated. He knows how to turn it into something combustible. The truth is, Roy can be deadly anywhere.

Still, he is thankful for the lack of rain.

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Asim looks at the Ishvalan sky laced with blackened smoke, and thinks _what have they done._ This is not his beautiful country. This is hell. This is the smell of burned bodies and festering death, of hordes of flies and bloodied weapons, of shit and piss and everyone's last meal chucked out of their stomach. This is a war zone and Asim feels his lungs burn as he inhales the air around him.

His fingers fumble against the trigger of his gun. He is slick with sweat, but he pulls it anyway and watches as his vision is painted red.

There are alchemists on the battlefield now and they are not human, _how can they be?_ They resemble, more than anything, some kind of demon.

He sees his brothers go down around him and clambers to the ground where his barricade shields him, narrowly escaping bursts of shrapnel. Beside him, a bullet blows straight through his brother's eye, and Asim hears a scream gurgle in his throat.

 _No no no no no no._

He wants to curl in a ball. There are devils roaming the earth and hawks in the sky and he can see explosions scatter across his vision and it's too much _it's too much!_ His grandfather is dead. His father is dead. His brothers and sisters are being wiped off of Ishvalan ground and it doesn't matter that they've managed seven years of this war, or gotten by with the steady supply of ammunition and other necessities from Aerugo, because right now in this moment, his people are _dying._

 _Ishvala_ , he cries, _have you abandoned us?_

Tears well in his eyes, but he will not falter. He will not let these filthy Amestrian dogs take away everything from him - including his faith.

So Asim takes the knife that his father gave him, and runs and runs and runs across the battlefield, dodging bullets and hiding in the smoke laden air. He sees one of those demons - dark hair and dark eyes and stark white gloves - and sprints toward his figure. He is raising the knife above his head. The man does not see him.

Asim doesn't even have a chance to block. The man turns, snaps his fingers, and all the boy sees is bright and burning flame. Then, nothing.

Asim is seventeen.

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Roy is declared a hero of war and instead of a medal he gets blood on his hands he can not wash off.

Later, he will look at the Elric brothers and think nothing about their skills in alchemy.

After all, Edward is joining the military; Edward is fifteen.


End file.
